If you were one of Ray Thompson’s five children – such as Evan Thompson – you were on a martial-arts schedule preset by the academy owner and enthusiast.

At 3 years old, you began Japanese kempo karate, including a certain number of classes per week. At 10 years old, you started kickboxing and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. By 15, full-contact kickboxing competition was allowed.

You could choose to stop participating in martial arts, of course. When you were 16.

“It was interesting because right around when I turned 16, the light bulb went off,” Evan Thompson told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). “I understood why he kept us on that schedule, why he was so adamant that we stayed in martial arts. It was the best for us. It kept us from getting in trouble with other things.

“Now I’m old enough to understand the benefits and everything he was doing for us.”

And now that Thompson has completed his father’s final rule, he will become a professional MMA fighter. After completing 10 amateur fights, the minimum for earning professional status in his family, Thompson will make his professional debut tonight by fighting Bobby Moore at 185 pounds at Legacy FC 16 in Allen, Texas.

The 28-year-old has already made MMA a major part of his life, opening one of the RCJ Machado Jiu Jitsu gyms in the Dallas area with the help of his brother-in-law, Carlos Machado. He has been around martial-arts instruction since his earliest days, and he now spends his life teaching and running his gym with a business partner.

On Friday, Thompson will add professional fighting to his resume that he once thought would include acting, not combat sports. Instead, he stayed on the path that his father began.

He is hoping to make the same splash as his brother, Stephen, a fighter nicknamed “Wonderboy” who is now a two-fight UFC veteran.

“I’m definitely excited about the level of competition,” he said. “I know I need to get better, and I need to push my training to the next level. It’s one stepping stone closer to the UFC.”

A family affair

The five Thompson children all made martial arts part of their lives at the instruction of their father, who continues to operate his gym Upstate Karate in Simpsonville, S.C., where the family was raised.

Several of them have stayed with the sport. Stephen has been a professional fighter since 2010 and won his UFC debut at UFC 143 against Daniel Stittgen. A sister, Lindsay, is also a blackbelt in kempo karate and a blue belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

The family’s third brother, Tony, veered away from martial arts to play football, and he recently completed his junior season as a defensive lineman for the Elon University football team in North Carolina.

Thompson’s first fight came when he was 15 years old and he took on a 29-year-old in kickboxing.

“That was before they separated it into divisions and created an adult division,” he said. “I fought him, and I won. I think it was shortly after that they moved to divisions.”

All the while, Thompson and his family continued work at his father’s school, a passion and business venture that can be tied to Elvis Presley. Ray Thompson was a big Elvis fan, and once he heard Elvis was trying out martial arts, he wanted to do the same.

He opened his school a few years before Evan’s birth, and it was part of his family’s life from then on.

“For our family, it was just required,” Thompson said. “My dad had his reasons. There were times we wanted to try other sports. I remember ‘The Sandlot’ came out, and I wanted to try baseball. Then ‘Mighty Ducks’ came out, and I wanted to try hockey. I didn’t end up doing those. We did martial arts.”

Not an actor, a fighter

Thompson’s father first heard about Machado through one of the instructors at his gym. The instructor knew Machado, and he stressed to Ray Thompson that the oldest of the five Machado brothers known for their background and teaching of Brazilian jiu-jitsu would be a perfect person to visit and teach classes.

Thompson was about 13 years old at the time. A few years later, after Machado had visited several times to perform seminars in South Carolina, the family introduced him to Lindsay, who was home from college. Later, they married.

When Thompson was 21, he was hoping to pursue an acting career, and he moved to Dallas to stay with Lindsay and Machado, and to try to make some connections there before moving to Los Angeles. But once he got to Dallas, he became more ingrained in Machado’s schools, and he hoped to make martial arts his life.

“I was going to school for film acting, but I realized that wasn’t really something I wanted to do,” he said. “I loved the writing side of things more. Then a couple of years later we opened up our gym.”

In 2009, Thompson won the International Kickboxing Federation world title in the cruiserweight-international rules division, and he told his father he wanted to pursue MMA. He made his amateur debut not long after, the first of 10 he would fight before becoming a professional.

Along the way, he has talked regularly and visited with his brother Stephen, who lives in South Carolina and continues his own professional career. The two are close, and they plan to continue helping each other going forward, especially as Evan formally becomes a professional on Friday.

“He has a lot of knowledge when it comes to MMA, so every time I’m home we work together on it,” Thompson said. “We’re best friends, and we talk all the time. He’s really helped me through this.”

Award-winning newspaper reporter Kyle Nagel pens “Fight Path” each week. The column focuses on the circumstances that led fighters to a profession in MMA. Know a fighter with an interesting story? Email us at news [at] mmajunkie.com.

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